Is Google Going Too Far In Latest Advertising Bans?
from the a-little-explanation-would-be-nice dept
We've been talking a bit about some of the communications problem Google seems to have at times, often not doing a very good job communicating with the public on things that may impact them greatly. Here's yet another example, sent in by Ryan, who notes that many people have recently been kicked out of Google's AdWord program with no recourse or explanation.Now, it seems pretty clear that Google is trying to block "bad" advertisers who are somehow lying or cheating the system -- and that's a good thing. But these sweeping bans seem to be catching plenty of legitimate advertisers, and even more frustrating than the "ban" itself is the fact that as many times as you attempt to get them to explain why you were banned or ask for your case to be reconsidered, the company's response is, effectively, to tell people: "You were banned for being bad, and you will never advertise with us again. Goodbye." While I'm sure plenty of the banned accounts were banned for nefarious activity, it seems ridiculous to do a permanent and total ban with no explanation whatsoever. Google has been known to do this before (certainly many folks who use AdSense have received similar notices with the same lack of info or recourse). It's just a shame, because it's the sort of thing that Google could do right, and seems to have chosen not to.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: ads, bans, communications
Companies: google
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Interesting Conundrum
Will be interesting to see how or if they try to fix this issue.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Interesting Conundrum
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Interesting Conundrum
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Funny
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Funny
No, actually that's not the case at all. He's referring to cases in which people have NOT broken any TOS agreements but still get banned. This happens fairly often, and Google has been really bad about following up with those who were wrongly banned.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Funny
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Funny
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
And that makes it OK?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Depends on the perspective...
If google catches many scammers and only a few legit customers get kicked out in the process, that isnt as bad, accidents will happen, and a company built on free cant hire people to prevent it.
But
While it would take hundreds of employees to make sure that every scammer removed was indeed a scammer, it would only take several if any new employees to handle claims of mistakes made, so that legit customers could get back in.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Level playing fields
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Level playing fields
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
GOOGLE = KAFKA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They got us too...
We were stunned to have our account canceled recently, and we have no idea why it happened. Of course there's no recourse, no one at Google returns our mails, despite inviting us to respond if we felt it was done in error.
We're faced with a starkly frightening future without the sales leads we generated with our Adwords campaigns, and our Canadian office - with far more staff - is now terrified that they'll face the same ban.
It is powerfully frustrating to be dealt this blow and not have any mechanism for appeal or recourse, moreso 'cause we thought we knew Google's rules and were following them. No warning, just a permanent and bewildering end to our number one customer generating mechanism.
The best part was the email from Google a week later inviting us to read about new ways to maximize our now dead Adwords campaigns.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Too Many Unwritten Rules
While it may seem unrelated, websites get deindexed or dropped from the search engine completely and Google claims they won't tell anyone why because it would tip off the black hatters to find ways around it. Poppycock, I say.
It's time to find a better, more profitable source.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ban
Bravo Google, keep going, you do not need this trash advertising anyways, there are plenty of honest and good adwords customers out there that sell products and services and do not scam people.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Ban
[ link to this | view in chronology ]